May 29, 2011

Reasoning and logic are a mask; conclusions spring from preferences, prejudices and passions


We have, most of us, our chosen explanation of this dolorous phenomenon [of the decline of Indian civilisation]. The patriot attributes our decline to the ravages of foreign invasion and the benumbing influences of foreign rule; the disciple of European materialism finds out the enemy, the evil, the fount and origin of all our ills, in our religion and its time-honoured social self-expression. Such explanations, like most human thoughts, have their bright side of truth as well as their obscure side of error; but they are not, in any case, the result of impartial thinking.
Man may be, as he has been defined, a reasoning animal, but it is necessary to add that he is, for the most part, a very badly reasoning animal. He does not ordinarily think for the sake of finding out the truth, but much more for the satisfaction of his mental preferences and emotional tendencies; his conclusions spring from his preferences, prejudices and passions; and his reasoning and logic paraded to justify them are only a specious process or a formal mask for his covert approach to an upshot previously necessitated by his heart or by his temperament. When we are awakened from our modern illusions, as we have been awakened from our mediaeval superstitions, we shall find that the intellectual conclusions of the rationalist, for all their pomp and protest of scrupulous enquiry, were as much dogmas as those former dicta of Pope and theologian, which confessed without shame their simple basis in the negation of reason....
It is always best, therefore, to scrutinise very narrowly those bare, trenchant explanations which so easily satisfy the pugnacious animal in our intellect; when we have admitted that small part of the truth on which they seize, we should always look for the large part which they have missed. INDIA'S REBIRTH- Part II

Comment posted by: Sandeep: Re: 15 August: an Eternal Birth—the Mother explains its significance
I tend to leave aside some of these high-brow observations made by the Mother like this one about the significance of 15th August.  Thats because I don't possess the consciousness she had when she spoke of these things, so it makes no sense to interpret it intellectually.

Sri Aurobindo has outlined this very succinctly in this chapter: [...]

Standing on the head of reason is Adwaita. I don't think the law of parsimony gets that far at all and probably has little to do with spirituality; something like the idea can probably be found in Nyaya and Mimamsa which said about everything possible concerning causality. I am mentioning the idea in this context because it is very tempting to ascribe "spiiritual" and "occult" causes for things that are actually quite concrete and present, such as class discrimination. There, Marxist criticism and psychology is probably the best authority

May 26, 2011

University of Human Unity invites participation in Public-Interactive Forums


Start: May 21, 2011, 9:32 am End: May 31, 2012, 9:32 am
The Newly Designed Public-Interactive Forums got published!
University of Human Unity invites you to participate in it.
You may also be invited as an author to post new forum topics in due course.
Please click here to visit our Interactive Forums.

Comment by Rod  in reply to philippe Last Updated: May 15, 2011
One of the results of this pattern, which can be seen in Auroville, is a kind of mass paranoid psychosis. Instead of addressing the behaviors of people in a direct and rational way, people are overcome by their fears and their righteous delusions, etc. I prefer using Occam's razor, if possible. The law of parsimony was effectively used to combat religious obscurantism during his time as well.
Comment by Rod  in reply to Rod Last Updated: May 15, 2011
Standing on the head of reason is Adwaita. I don't think the law of parsimony gets that far at all and probably has little to do with spirituality; something like the idea can probably be found in Nyaya and Mimamsa which said about everything possible concerning causality. I am mentioning the idea in this context because it is very tempting to ascribe "spiiritual" and "occult" causes for things that are actually quite concrete and present, such as class discrimination. There, Marxist criticism and psychology is probably the best authority. Back to Rod's Comment

if you’re looking for an orthodoxy here you won’t find it. I find some things of value in Marx just as I do in the case of a number of other philosophers. I also think he’s mistaken on certain points. As for the Frankfurt school I largely see these thinkers as a catastrophic betrayal of Marxist materialism and attempt to domesticate his thought back in the fold of bourgois idealism.
This is a fair point and the sorts of demystification that we find in Lucretius and Spinoza (two of my personal heroes), differ substantially from the sort of demystification I’m talking about. These sorts of demystifications reveal not the human in everything, but precisely that the human isn’t in everything (which is part of what makes Marx’s dissertation such a hoot and complete misreading of Lucretius). 
When I evoke the concept of demystification I’m thinking specifically of 20th century critical projects where the aim is always to reveal some hidden human force behind what we take to be out there in the world. The Frankfurt school would, of course, be included in this, but also psychoanalysis, deconstruction, Foucault’s analyses of power, Zizek’s critiques of ideology, etc., etc., etc. 
Let me be clear: I am not suggesting these modes of demystification aremistaken. All of these modes of critique reveal something real and important. The problem is their overstatement. There’s a marked tendency to see all material beings as disguised reflections of the human, ignoring the positive contributions of nonhuman agencies that can’t be reduced to the human.

May 20, 2011

Sri Aurobindo advocated the doctrine of internalising the Vedas

The path of Aurobindo Ghosh is to me more noble, more inspiring, more lofty, more unselfish, though more thorny. Jagmohan 
The next leading figure of neo-Hinduism whose views, stated or implied, on the issue of Hinduism as a missionary religion must be taken into account is Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950). If Tagore's vision was universal, Aurobindo's vision ...
See Barbara Southard, “The Political Strategy of Aurobindo Ghosh: The Utilization of Hindu Religious Symbolism and the Problem of Political Mobilization in Bengal,” Modern Asian Studies 14, no. 3 (1980): 353–376. 82....
“The Political Strategy of Aurobindo Ghosh: The Utilization of Hindu Religious Symbolism and the Problem of Political Mobilization in Bengal.” Modern Asian Studies 14.3 (1980): 353–376. Spitzer, Leo. “Back Through the Future: Nostalgic ...
Men like Shree Aurobindo Ghosh, Ram Krishna Paramhans became religious leaders, and their wives and women followers established their own identities as spiritual leaders with a sociopolitico-religious influence upon their devotees and ...
K: I am telling you that Christ was concerned with his soul, Aurobindo Ghosh was concerned with his soul. Sri Ramkrishna, our rishis and munis were concerned with their soul. There are many things that were wrong in the world, ...
... and finally, that strand which would by 1908 become the ideological bulwark of the 'revolutionary terrorists'—for a time nominally represented by the meteoric Aurobindo Ghosh, the future spiritual guru Sri Aurobindo. ...
During the early years of the twentieth century, he was active in a secret anticolonial movement called Yugantar, meaning “new age” or “transition of an epoch,” along with another future guru, Aurobindo Ghosh. ...
Many revolutionaries, including Aurobindo Ghosh, were arrested by the British immediately after the Kennedy murders. IV. Saunders was assassinated by Bhagat Singh and others as a revenge for the police assault on Bipin Chandra Pal. ...
But it was Aurobindo Ghosh,101 Swami Dayananda Saraswati102 and Swami Vivekananda who were critical in reinterpreting the Hindu religion, converging on the Vedas and Upanishads as religious texts, highlighting its liberal traditions, ...
Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh advocated extra-constitutional and extremist methods of mass mobilization and non-cooperation such as Swadeshi and Boycott.21 They did not trust the ...
Another set of thinkers and intellectuals around whom the nationalist discourse keeps operating consists of Aurobindo Ghosh, Vivekananda, Bankim Chandra. Of late, Savarkar and Golwalkar have been added to this second list....
“The Political Strategy of Aurobindo Ghosh: The Utilization of Hindu Religious Symbolism and the Problem of Political Mobilization in Bengal.” Modern Asian Studies 14, no. 3 (1980): 353–76. Spangenburg, Bradford. ...
Bombs were occasionally deployed by the revolutionary groups that began to be formed under leaders such as Aurobindo Ghosh. Attempts were made to assassinate high British officials, and armed robberies were committed to finance ...
This was developed above all in Aurobindo Ghosh's famous articles in Bande Mataram, 9-23 April 1907, later reprinted as ^ Doctrine of Passive Resistance (Pondicherry. 1948), See also Sandhya, 21 November 1906: 'if. ...
He was a famous Bar-at-Law and out of many important cases he pleaded for Sri Aurobindo Ghosh against the British Empire. Once he wrote— ". ... Sri Aurobindo ( Aurovinda Ghosh) (15/08/1872 - 5/12/1950) Sri Aurobindo (Aurovinda Ghosh ...
(1995) “The Doctrine of Passive Resistance,” in Sri Aurobindo, Volume One: Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings. ... Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Ghosh, Durba. (2006) “Terrorism in Bengal: Political Violence in the Inter- war Years,” in ...
Several conceptualizations and critiques of nationalism by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, MS Golwalkar, VD Savarkar, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Sri Aurobindo Ghosh were at play in the political arena in ...
When he returned to India in 1892 to take up his assignment at Vadodara (then Baroda) under Maharaja Sayaji Rao, the idealist Arvind Ghosh was already on the path to becoming Sri Aurobindo. He was to delve in the modern scientific ...
1905 January 22, 1905 February 4, 1905 The Bengali author Aurobindo Ghosh writes Vawani Mandir. In this book, he explains the plans and programs of the Bengali revolutionary terrorist group he hopes to form to fight British rule. ...
Also incorrect is the statement made here that “Sri Aurobindo shut himself away for seventeen years at Pondicherry.” 20. “Let us take an example tiresomely common in the Vedas to which Sri Aurobindo Ghosh draws attention: cattle (go). ...
... theory of a famous Hindu thinker Aurobindo Ghosh who advocated the doctrine of internalising the Vedas. In a speech he gave at Al Madrassah Al Sultaniyyah in Beirut, he said, "The sciences which we feel in need of is thought of by some people to be technology and ...
Such early nationalists as Aurobindo Ghosh and later Bal Gangadhar Tilak not only employed Hindu religious symbols but also portrayed the Muslim, along with the British, as the Other. Mother India, they claimed, had been the victim of ...
Indian thinkers of the stature of Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, andAurobindo Ghosh fashioned both impressive critiques of Western scientific and technological imports and precedents and spirited defenses of Indian epistemologies, ...
One of Tilak's lieutenants in the period up to 1910 was the mystic and philosopher Sri Aurobindo Ghosh. His involvement with the nationalist movement was short but intense, and it illustrates both the similarities between Indian ...
Moreover, as Aurobindo Ghosh has pointed out, every truth, however true in itself, yet, taken apart from others which at once limit and complete it, becomes a snare to bind the intellect and a misleading dogma; for in reality each is ...
'It is significant,' writes Aurobindo Ghosh [1872-1950] in The Ideal of Human Unity, 'that the one sub-nation in India which from the first refused to undergo this yoke (that of the English language, that is), devoted itself to the ...
... battle of 122 see also Mahabharata of Bundelkhand Ghamani, Behrooz 29 gharana 186–187 see akhara ghazi 7 Ghosh, Aurobindo 241–242 Ghosh, Barindra Kumar 241 Ghosh, Gopal Chandra 22 Ghosh, Jamini Mohan 83, 95, 102 Ghoshal, ...
The leaders of the militant national movement, Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh and others, sought to build on a basis of Hindu religion for their agitation and to identify the national awakening with a revival of Hinduism. ...
Like Bipin Chandra Pal and Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh too drew upon India's past glory to build a well-organized anti-British nationalist campaign (Heehs 2000: 42- 67). Disappointed by the stark sterility of the nation, ...
Hardly anybody has by character and strenuous exertions been a greater inspirer, idealist and epoch- maker in politics than Aurobindo and none a greater philanthropist and educational benefactor than Rashbehari Ghosh.18 Commenting on ...
Of course, prior to all this, Aurobindo Ghosh had already issued the call around 1905 for the construction of a temple to "Bhawani Bharati. Mother of India" in his pamphlet Bhawani Mandir. He insisted that the temple should be built "in ...
Annie Besant lived and worked in India during the period when Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo Ghosh and Mahatma Gandhi were carrying on their revolutionary ideas and ideals in the social, educational, religious and political fields. ...
The remarks made by Sri Aurobindo Ghosh in his article “New Lamps for Old” published in “Indu Prakash”, a Bombay journal, articulated clearly the mood and attitude of these new radical and militant nationalist leaders who came to be ...
"Years earlier, when I had seen Aurobindo and the beginning of his gallant youth, I had sung, "O Aurobindo! ... At that time, Ramchandra Mazumdar, Suresh Chakravarty, Biren Ghosh, Vijay Nag, were all present at the office of...
The path of Aurobindo Ghosh is to me more noble, more inspiring, more lofty, more unselfish, though more thorny. The outbreak of the first world war made the Congress and the government sink their differences. The former believed that...
Extrait de la couverture : "[This book] argues that ideas about manhood play a key role in building and sustaining the modern nation.
The Bengal National College established by the council had Aurobindo Ghosh as its first principal. Financial contributions came from wealthy landowners, industrialists and academics (NCE 1 956). The NCE proposed a liberal curriculum for ...
Manmathnath Gupta has rightly remarked: "He (Gandhi) was nearer to Vivekananda and Aurobindo Ghosh than Marx and Lenin". See Manmathnath Gupta: Gandhi and the Revolutionaries, Rao, MD (Ed.): The Mahatma - A Marxist Symposium, New Delhi, ...
Nationalism and religion were even sometimes direcdy identified, so that every religious person could be enjoined to serve the cause of national liberation. Nationalism, said Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950), was a religion sent by God....
... a source of great friction among those communities who firmly believe in the fundamentals of their religions. The main votaries of this approach were Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Bal Gangadhar ...
The extremist movement had at its head men of strict orthodoxy such as its two principal leaders, Aurobindo Ghosh and Tilak. Mr Ghosh is presently in French India [Pondicherry] and Mr Tilak is in prison. ...
... like JC Bose and PC Ray, Aurobindo Ghosh and Bepin Chandra Pal, Lord Sinha and CR Das, and Sarojini Naidu and Sarla Devi Chaudhurani, to further the cause of social, educational, and political advancement of India. ...
Sri Aurobindo Ghosh spoke of Hindu Rashtra as being the same as Sanatana Dharma that would grow or decline with it. He also stressed that freedom of Bharat would cast a duty upon her children of setting up an ideal society in the light ...
1872-1950 Life of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, Bengali Indian nationalist and renaissance yoga philosopher. His 3o-volume work discusses the "superman," the Divinely transformed individual soul. Withdraws from the world in 1910 and founds ...
In fact Aurobindo was given four dates by the Commission for the riding test: (1) 9th August, (2) 20th October (3) 5th ... Our father, Dr KD Ghosh of Khulna, has been unable to provide the three of us with sufficient fund for the most ...
It is also in consonance with the dream of the great Yogi Aurobindo Ghosh. K. Natwar Singh is justified when he says: "This is in the hands of cosmic master, unseen yet all powerful. ...
Barindra Kumar Ghosh, the younger brother of Aurobindo Ghosh, and Bhupendra Nath Dutt, the brother of Swami Vivekananda, started the political journal Jugantar, from which the later terrorists took their name. ...
Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in ... - Mushirul Hasan, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Indian Council of Historical Research - 2008 - 1280 pages - Snippet view
1 Bijay Chandra Chatterjee (1878-1973); became a Barrister in 1905 and took part in the Swadeshi Movement; assisted Aurobindo Ghosh in running Bande Mataram; also associated with Bipin Chandra Pal's New India; attended Surat Congress ...
In the treatment of socio-political issues by Sri Aurobindo, I have minimised my reliance on explanations of the inner ... On 28 March 1963, Sudhir Ghosh, an Indian emissary of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, met President Kennedy in ...
The great Sayajirao Gaekwad the III was the one who gave a job to Aurobindo Ghosh, and brought him to Baroda to help him in his Reign as a benevolent ruler of the then-Baroda state. I am proud to be associated with Sri Vinaysinh,...
Speaking of successful yogis who worked outside India, another great spiritual seeker and philosopher who returned after studying in the west and took upon his spiritual practice in Pondicherry is Sri Aurobindo Ghosh(l 871-1950). ...